Engine 2 runs well on my i7 64bit PC. I do get some spits and crackles every now and then and it's nowhere near as efficient on resources as Kontakt 5, but it wouldn't stop me from buying Engine based libraries. I already own Forest Kingdom, Epic World, Era and Galaxy X. I use Galaxy X a lot and it doesn't cause me problems. The others are great too, but they just don't fit into what I do as often as Galaxy X has lately.

You can download some limited demos to try it out. Though I understand that you only really know how well something's going to work for you once you start using it in projects, it'll still give you an idea if it's a total bust or not.

I dont have full products and with demos i think i dont get yet any problems but i tested this stuff only very quickly. But now i test for you.I get cpu spikes with Logic 9.1.5 and OS 10.7.5. and processor is i5 2.5ghz and 8gigabytes of memory. Machine is mac mini middle 2011. btw i get cpu spikes with some other plugins sometimes even Logic own.

Sure it is NOT as slick as Kontakt, but it is not a crashy, bug-fest either.

I'm sure that they will improve it with time, and there have already been several updates issued in the small amount of time since its initial release.

This demonstrates to me that they are commited to improving things and creating a solid platform for their libraries.

I wish that all of Tari's libraries had been released in Kontakt format instead, but for me using the ENGINE player is a small price to pay for some of the most beautiful sample libraries available today.

Does anyone have any opinions? Good/bad/performance/usability/copy protection?

As it uses scripted GUI I think it is natural to compare it with Kontakt.

Actually, Engine does not have scripting built into it per se in the way Kontakt does. It only has a customizable performance page that's done via XML and custom graphics. That's a far cry from scripting. Also, it has built in legato feature so you don't need to script it (but you have to sample things properly for this to work, of course - and this is what Tari is doing).

It's a completely different animal. I must say I very much dislike the tiny hard to read font they're using throughout the interface. And having circular mode on knobs in 2013 is bloody ridiculous (there's also no way to change it, you can only drag the value fields up-down, but this isn't as precise as one might think).

EvilDragon wrote:Actually, Engine does not have scripting built into it per se in the way Kontakt does. It only has a customizable performance page that's done via XML and custom graphics. That's a far cry from scripting.

OK, let's call it customizable GUI then

UVI player, is that like Engine, or is that more like Kontakt scripted GUI?

On PC there is also one big bug concerning Elastique mode. Elastique mode is some kind of time stretching algo, to have sounds play at song tempo. Sadly right now it causes cpu spikes, pops n crackles galore. But they said they would fix this with Engine 3.

Honestly, as a new buyer i would wait to see wheter E3 has this fixed.

I'm on Windows (Win7 64-bit) and was looking at both Desert Winds and Forest Kingdom, to compliment Alchemy. Minor rare/random glitches in realtime playback will be annoying but as long as a final non-realtime render from my host (Tracktion 4) is clean, I'll deal with it to get the sounds I want.

I didn't know about the free versions, just looked 'em up - going to get them today and try it out tonight - thanks for mentioning it!